MORE’s Strategic Planning: 2018-2023
MORE’s 2018-2023 STRATEGIC PLANNING SESSION
11-12 November 2017
Hedgesville, WV
Board Members Present
- Ernie Rodriguez, President
- Rob Lowe, Vice-President
- Greg Dwyer, Operations Director
- Tom Howe, Membership Director
- Carlos Alfaro, Activities Director
- Dave Magill, MD Advocacy Director
- Jeff Niner, VA Advocacy Director
MORE Staff, MORE Members, and Guests
- Steve DonTigny, MORE Executive Director
- Jonathan Kidwell, MORE Trail Boss
- Jonah Meyers, MORE Assistant Treasurer
- Ryan Delaney, MORE member
- Michael Hillstrom, MORE Member
- Steve Harper, MORE member and Severn Run trail liaison
MORE’s Five Year Strategy (Ernie)
Ernie: What’s MORE’s long term vision? Where do we see ourselves in five to ten years?
Broader audience. Becoming a Trail-Focused Organization—planning, building, maintaining, standards, educating, establishing trails in every community in the region, creating diverse trails, ride centers/epics, establishing community—5,000 members and why do we want this? We have a deficit in outreach to political/community leadership and in our advocacy to them–we need to establish and maintain positive interactions and collaborations w/elected officials and land managers in our region. With respect to community, we need to build this in each jurisdiction’s “own back yards” b/c trails build economic opportunity. More volunteers and mobilization of volunteers. More women and Kids. We want to be known as THE voice for trails through strong advocacy—MORE will be a voice for trails. Creating fun, positive experiences for all trail users. We want to maintain focus on “Riding Bikes and Building Trails since 1992”.
Survey to members: MORE delivers four basic items of value to members: Advocacy, Building Trails, Riding Opportunities, and Events, + other. Then rank-order these. Action: Ernie, Rob, and Jonah will work to get a survey on this topic out to members in the next 60 days.
If we bring runners into MORE, they may actually take over the organization in 10 years; we should be prepared for this possibility.
What’s are our strategies to support our long-term vision? Converting users to trail stewards, maintain and promoting open elections, creating and establishing strategic partnerships, supporting MORE’s liaisons and ride programs, supporting communities, top-notch communications to all stakeholders (members, staff, volunteers, land managers, elected officials, strategic partners, the community), transparency in what we do, better events and branding/signage and focusing on government relations (establishing, maintaining, and defending our brand—MORE).
What goals do we need to establish to support MORE’s strategy and vision?
- Monthly, focused communication w/key volunteers: MORE Board, MORE Staff, trail liaisons to keep them in the know and in a position to best communicate with riding communities.
- Quarterly Trail Head News must go out on a quarterly basis as a rule.
- Social Media. Who in MORE should have access to the web page and the social media pages? Website is for archiving and legal/administrative documents and FB is for posting events and communicating w/members and partners. Martin has a 70-page document on strategy. No current access for Jeff, Rob, Carlos, lets fix that. Action: Greg, with input from the Board and staff, will draft a social media policy for review by the board for the December Board meeting.
- Transparency—board meetings are open to all members and non-members and minutes are always posted to the website.
- Open Elections: we will continue to promote MORE’s openness and transparency with open elections for all. Continue to recruit assistants for the Board on various committees and for specific events and activities. Assistant volunteers help reduce workload and gain understanding of daily operations of the BoD’s.
- Transforming trails users into trail stewards: Trail Building planning and maintenance. Several MORE members (Eric and Mike in particular) have been on the front lines of this. Q: Is more education regarding trail building and maintenance a strategy to build the base for trail builders (trail knowledge)? Empowering liaisons. Educating our partner groups: hikers, runners, equestrians. “Educational Outreach”. Show our current and prospective partners that there is a technical aspect (engineering, landscape architecture, construction, environmental management) to the trail work that MORE does. Ryan D. has some experience w/this in Prince William County, VA. IMBA is implementing “Trail Labs”—an educational series w/land managers
- Continue to build and strengthen the liaison community see more detail below
- Events: We know that membership is driven by events, therefore continue the Discovery Ride Series, create vol. opportunities from events, and focus on both big and small events. Summer Member Picnic vs. a one-time Discovery Ride.
- Branding: branding at trails, (temp signs at Fountainhead and BROT) “this trail ‘BROT’ to you by MORE”, signs at trailheads, parking lots, etc. Suggest we get some type of coordinator for the liaisons for this for each park. This works well w/our vision for MTB Project and a volunteer or intern.
- Government Relations: Continue the OA model that Jonah and Ryan have established. Continue working w/the VA mountain bike alliance. Who can assist in MD? —Dave Magill has the action to reach-out to other MD chapters. We want to strengthen our voice with Annapolis.
- Strategic Partnerships: for example, hiking and equestrian groups, Outdoor Alliance, Friends of Patapsco, WABA, youth organizations (NICA and YMCA). Should MORE recognize these partners on our website and FB pages? Q: What about 2018—should the MoCo Epic team work w/MoCo runners to have a race or event on Saturday of the MoCo Epic weekend in 2018? Who are partners for the Patapsco Trail Fest? —canoe club, running clubs, Friends of Patapsco, Patapsco Heritage, Mountain Club of MD, Heritage Org.
Expanding partnerships is time consuming. Takes commitment. We simply can’t talk about it and give this task to a board member. Could we survey the liaisons to find out who they are partnering with—YES. Could we put a “partnership” news item in every edition of Trail Head News? YES. Action: Dave Magill and Jeff Niner to organize this via a survey before the spring 2018 trail liaisons meeting.
Vision and Mission of MORE’s Executive Director for 2018 (Steve)
- Lead MoCo Epic 2018
- Continue w/events management at MoCo, increase participation by volunteers and others.
- Increase sponsors and fundraising
- Saturday demo rides: Increase bike manufactures and vendor presence at the event.
- Increasing membership through new memberships
- MORE partnerships: serving as representative of MORE. Trail runners.
- Lead and facilitate fundraising efforts
- DC advocacy—I’ve moved off this somewhat and handed this to the current team at DCMTB. Will continue to support local DC team.
- Trail building opportunities in Loudon County; trials there are almost non-existent.
- Support communications and operations